The End of a Love Affair
by Blue Corsair
Summary: Jack has broken his fair share of hearts, but maybe he didn't always realize it, or chose not to notice. This is a piece from the POV of one of his many conquests, who remains nameless to represent any one of his besotted lovers. Somewhat explicit.


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The End of a Love Affair

"I love you."

It explodes from my lips one night, as he stands over my creaky, little bed and doffs his shirt, revealing scars and tattoos to me, like riddles scrawled in ink and white, raised tissue, runes and stories embedded in his very flesh. His hair is a dark mass of sinuous braids, colorful beads and hidden, intriguing treasures as it crowds over his powerful shoulders, his skin's golden-brown tone reminiscent of the probing caress of the sun, and I can't help but want to eat him with my eyes. I know that, even tipsy, with a steadily emptying bottle of rum –shapely like a woman –loosely grasped in his bejeweled hand, he is beautiful, and that his beauty is what made me love him.

"You don't really love me," he says imperviously, with his characteristic, hypnotic blink, which might in reality be a wink, although it's rarely possible to tell. His dark brown eyes, unsettlingly mischievous despite this declaration, don't leave mine. "Y'just imagined it, savvy?"

Savvy, savvy, always savvy, seems like the only word I ever hear. He talks a lot but he says nothing. He's like a conch shell, always telling stories of the sea and never telling me anything more. Empty thoughts wash over me in his incongruous amalgam of alternatingly sickening and lovely words; even though he tells me nothing, I feel I am his confidante, and it's an amusing fantasy to entertain sometimes, but right now he doesn't know what he's talking about.

"Then I must have quite an imagination," I say, trying vainly to sound bitter, wanting him to care about me and knowing that he won't. He lowers himself next to me, his fingers lacing themselves in my hair, that same, gentle way he always does, but never gentle enough to disclose the forbidden emotion that I crave.

"Aye." His words are smooth, but his voice is gruff, long weathered by smoke and wind and drink. His breath is a warm whiff of rum. "That's why I like you so much, I think."

__

Not love, I want to say, but don't.

I just say, "But not enough."

His face is inches from mine, but I refuse to betray my anguish to his probing eyes and keep my features as emotionless as possible. I'm not as good at it as he is.

"No," he says at length, as though he knows what I'm talking about. He is no longer playful, his sepia gaze darkening harshly and desirously all at once. "I reckon it isn't, but things seem to be workin' all right anyway."

His hands grab roughly as he pushes me down into the sad, damp mattress, his body like a heavy, breathing quilt. His lips are slightly chapped and his beard scratches at my skin, but I couldn't possibly complain. His kiss is hungry and demanding, his motivation obvious through the shameless explorations of his fingertips and the thick hardness digging into my hip. Were I not so sick in the head and in the heart, I'd have the sense not to give him what he wants. But I am sicker than even I can comprehend, and I comply like a willow bending to the wrath of shivering autumn winds.

I let his callused fingers explore, let him lift my skirts, expose me, take me as he has before in a shaking mass of sweat-coated flesh and slick, open-mouthed kissing and whispers into my hair like the frothing, living waves that he loves more than he loves me. Even inside and around and full to the breaking point with him, I feel hollow and realize that this means little more to him than the smooth press of my thighs against his, his fingers tangled in my hair, or my breasts bared to his hungry gaze. I realize not for the first time that I never should have kissed him; an inner voice repeats the same mantra over and over again to remind me: _Never kiss a man, you shouldn't kiss them, ever, don't get too close to the stupid brutes, why did you break the rules, you _fool?!

But it was _his_ trickery that beguiled me, that night not-so-long ago. We met and said nothing and danced in the rain, the kohl around his eyes washing away, rolling like black tears down his cheeks, though he was smiling just as broadly as I was. It was through this eccentricity (sort of like the way he walks and sways and moves his hands) that he dared me with his eyes and ensnared me in his exquisite web of lies. He led me to go against my will, to break every rule I know about my profession, and I hate him for his betrayal.

Yet at the same time I love him… and I'm not sure why. It's in the stories he tells, incoherent and rambling like a path without a destination, until he's finished and you've missed the point entirely, and he accuses you of not listening, but with that twinkling, amused smile that says he doesn't really mean it. It's in the way that he winks, that he laughs, with the rich sound of brass bells, when I say something stupid. And then it's the way that he kisses me and promises me that he's said worse things in his lifetime, to make me feel better, although I constantly find myself wondering if he really has. To me, he seems too wise do have done so.

I wish I had never met him, but I know that my life would never have seen _true _beauty, beyond what lies on the outside of him, but what lies behind those eyes, the perpetually sealed soul-gates that tease and trick and intimidate and uplift. This faltering affair let me glimpse that beauty –only once, and just for a few seconds, but I saw it, clearly, one time when the windows opened to his heart, and I shall never forget it.

__

The pain is worth that reward, I think, _but that's not to say that this won't hurt like hell._

After we lay sated in a too-small bed tonight, after I've drifted unwittingly to sleep bound in his deceitfully protective arms, comforted by the none-too-pleasant, but somehow reassuring scent of him, he's going to leave, and it's clear that he won't be returning any time soon. Possibly even never.

When I wake up tomorrow morning, there's going to be a generous offering on my bedside table, gold coins smiling with sarcastic sweetness at me in the morning sunlight. When I see it, I know that I'm going to feel sick and wish I was dead, because no matter how hard I try, I'll never escape this beautiful mistake. I landed myself in this mess, I'm the one living in a fairytale. Even if he instigated my foolish fancies, he doesn't know what he's done to me. All he knows is his hands under my clothes, and the sweet, obscenity-laced words that pour from his lips as he releases himself within me. He's oblivious to my pain, or if he's not, he just doesn't care.

To him, I'm nothing but another whore, and despite all the hate, love, confusion and despair that my heart could ever fashion, I can't hope to be anything more than that.

[I don't own anything from Pirates of the Caribbean. It all belongs to the mouse.]


End file.
